As a rule, I never trust my gut feeling. It is most often wrong. I won’t say it’s always wrong, because if it were, I would just do the opposite of what it tells me and I would be doing the right thing.
I suppose the thing about trusting your gut is that you do it without thinking about it. The moment comes and goes in a flash, and the deed is done.
Let me start with some background. I never dated anybody while I was going to school. Not because I didn’t want to, but no one seemed to ever be interested. At school, and even at church it seemed that everyone was already paired up with someone else. It got to the point where I felt I was that unwanted kid who was always picked last for team on recess. I finally quit bothering about it.
That moment comes without warning, and in a flash. I don’t remember the circumstances on why we did it (let’s just call it a gut response), but a friend of mine and I visited one of the older ladies from church. At one point she asked us what we thought about these new college girls who started attending. Mrs. Jones was one of those people who was hospitable to everybody, and invited them to her house.
Of course, we knew about them. We weren’t unfriendly, but we just never had the chance to cross paths with them much. As the young teenage boys that we were, we were also motivated by dating prospects, and they all seemed to show little interest. Then Mrs. Jones dropped the bomb.
She called two of the girls by name and said, “they were just here at the house talking, and said they would be interested in going out with you two boys.”
I’m sure we did the proverbial double take, as we wanted to know, “which one was interested in who?” The only thing Mrs. Jones would say is, “I think I’ll leave that up to you to figure out.”
It didn’t take long to arrange a double date and figure it out.
While my friends date didn’t work out in the long run, my date has been going on for the last 45 years.
I would call that making the right choice based on a gut instinct to visit a little old church lady.
Here are two music tracks for your enjoyment today
The first track in this playlist is the song that goes with this article. The second one is a song I wrote for my wife for our upcoming 45th anniversary.
